Saving apt cache pkgs for a fresh install

[nishtya]

I am on dialup and was wondering if I could save some of the larger debs in my apt cache for a fresh reinstall so I don't have to download them again. Maybe stupid question but it can be excruiating to redownload an open office & dependencies for instance, with a dialup. So was wondering if I could pop the bigger ones back in there and run apt-get update on the new install and it would know what I have in there and not go fetching them again when I want to install them. I have already saved what I have downloaded or unpacked to usr src.

[rickenbacherus]

Of course you can. Please have a look at man apt-get. A snip:

--no-download
Disables downloading of packages. This is best used with
--ignore-missing to force APT to use only the .debs it has
already downloaded. Configuration Item: APT::Get:ownload.

Also you can simply do dpkg -i <pkg>.deb